14 ms·

Police, prosecutors used junk science to decide 911 callers were liars

• ucm_edge 4y ago
  Junk science is a huge problem in law enforcement. Treating lie detectors as canonical, the blood splatter analysis to recreate crime scenes, this kind of stuff. It is especially problematic because police orgs are generally pretty good at adopting new techniques. But unfortunately the marketplace of ideas they have to shop in suffers from overrepresentation of garbage products. A huge part of law enforcement enhancement is going to involve cleaning this market up.
  • thecrash 4y ago
    "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
  • Sakos 4y ago
    > Junk science is a huge problem in law enforcement. Treating lie detectors as canonical, the blood splatter analysis to recreate crime scenes, this kind of stuff. I'm not sure what's the bigger problem. The use of junk science by law enforcement or how law enforcement and their methods are portrayed by popular media that ensure the use of junk science (and other harmful methods) can persist long-term. I'm sure everybody and their mother has seen Dexter (who works as a blood splatter analyst) or any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol).
    • watwut 4y ago
      Those are at least fiction. I have seen documentaries where pseudo psychology (not holding eye contact means you are lying, this or that entirely normal behavior treated as something chillingly sinister, parent deemed nit sufficiently crying) was treated as sure clue of guilt. And gut feelings, gut feelings of detectives were literally treated as evidence in those documentaries
      • scarmig 4y ago
        Most documentaries should be considered a subgenre of fiction. Inspired by reality, but mostly interested in telling a compelling narrative.
      • britneybitch 4y ago
        They're not always treated as fiction though. Some police officers model their behavior after what they see on TV. And police departments have given shows access to locations and props in exchange for favorable portrayal. John Oliver did a show about it recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNy6F7ZwX8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNy6F7ZwX8I
        • cratermoon 4y ago
          LA PD essentially invented the cop show. https://timeline.com/dragnet-lapd-propaganda-cop-bb19d9a5fb6f https://timeline.com/dragnet-lapd-propaganda-cop-bb19d9a5fb6...
      • tetraca 4y ago
        I think the practice is supposed to be a little more than what's depicted there. When they start an interrogation, they try to ask light or at least easy questions to see how a suspect answers without real pressure, then when they hit a hard question, they compare the responses and look for clusters of behavior which might indicate deception when taking into account how they behaved in contrast through the rest of the questioning. Not to say that it's going to be particularly accurate/good.
        • NikolaNovak 4y ago
          Right, but to oversimplify, as innocent as I am, I will react differently when asked "enjoying the weather today", "where were you on night if December 12th", and "did you murder Mukelefa Stanjipoljic". There'll be contrast just as baseline! I had a law enforcement in-law who was confident he could figure out a man by shaking his hand and looking at him in the eye, etc etc. He was perennial favourite of all the sleezy salespeople around because while he was certain he was getting a deal and being taken care of and getting the good stuff, for anything I had any insight into (computer, car, photo, and music stuff), he was getting ripped six ways to Sunday. But his confidence was not to be shaken.
    • kneebonian 4y ago
      > any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol). Listen dude there I have enough beef with paw patrol to make a texas ranchers BBQ look ill equipped, from the fact the mayor is an idiot, that obnoxious chicken the fact the town has outsourced all of it's emergency functions to what is basically the mafia, the fact that they sit on a money printer of toys and the fact that the song haunts my house day in and day out. But to say that Paw Patrol is a problem because it has a police dog in it and that he helps people is equivalent to saying that Daniel Tiger is anti-Democracy because it has a Royal Family.
      • Mikeb85 4y ago
        As someone with a 5 month old this post is simultaneously enlightening, hilarious and terrifying.
      • britneybitch 4y ago
        Other than the chicken, that description is a perfect match for New York City.
      • scrollaway 4y ago
        I think you will enjoy this video breakdown from Skip Intro: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0 It’s a superb video essay and absolutely worth the watch! But to be clear, it’s also playing into the meme that paw patrol is copaganda, so take it as a mix of comedy and serious analysis :) The gist of the video is that, while paw patrol is not copaganda, it is problematic for parallel reasons. It’s also a terrible tv show as you noted.
        • dinkumthinkum 4y ago
          I wouldn’t say it is superb. On this channel every third video is about how sone random show is “copaganda”, literally. The concept of that portmanteau is already fairly stupid to begin with.
          • 4y ago
    • rnd0 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure that the lack of police accountability is a far worse problem, to be honest. It eliminates any chance that we can reform law enforcement to any significant degree.
      • tyingq 4y ago
        They are somewhat intertwined though. If police can feed anyone to the DA, and the DA can then use a variety of sketchy tactics (including junk science, but mostly other stuff) to punish them, then it all works. If it kept resulting in cases that get thrown out, the feedback loop would slow it down some.
    • brookst 4y ago
      The media is a trailing indicator. It can lead to feedback loops and reinforce the bad behaviors it represents, but things like Dexter come about because some writer hears about police using blood spatter analysis and mythologizes it. If junk science were rejected where it matters, the media wouldn’t use it either, or would at least treat it they way they do dowsing or psychics. The media will serve any demand, no matter how dumb. But there has to be demand. That’s my theory anyway.
      • Sakos 4y ago
        It's a feedback loop, yes. You need popular support from voters to be able to implement changes in police procedure. Who's going to vote for the guy who wants to "gut" law enforcement methods when all their lives TV has told them that's just what the police does and how criminals are caught? Especially when the other guy is saying "look at him, he wants to protect criminals".
      • KennyBlanken 4y ago
        It's not a trailing indicator or feedback loop when you have the police and military actively pushing narratives on TV producers and Hollywood, even controlling scripts in exchange for access to extras and military equipment/facilities.
    • Agentlien 4y ago
      I've often wondered how exactly Paw Patrol's ample budget is allocated and under what authority they operate. Moreover, does the mayor using them for her personal errands constitute an abuse of power?
    • mbg721 4y ago
      I can absolutely imagine "CSI: Phrenology", if the timeline had worked out a little differently.
    • KennyBlanken 4y ago
      Portrayal of police dogs in a positive light is necessary because otherwise people would see them for what they are: living probable-cause generators and loopholes on laws and regulations on police brutality. There's plenty of evidence police dogs are worse than a coin flip and react to their handlers - but the supreme court said that was irrelevant and upheld basing a search off a dog's reaction to be valid. Dogs also act as a proxy for brutal, violent treatment of someone.
  • loteck 4y ago
    Let's make sure we add "gunshot detection" to this list, since that is the currently popular for-profit junk science product that police are pouring millions of dollars into acquiring all over the US.
    • wrigby 4y ago
      I’d be interested in understanding this better - what kind of sensors do you have in mind that are junk?
      • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        They use microphones to detect gunshots. It works in a controlled environment but in an actual municipality the data needs enough "massaging" by human analysts to get what are still fundamentally low-quality tips it's somewhere between redundant and a waste of resources.
        • cratermoon 4y ago
          > the data needs enough "massaging" by human analysts to get what are still fundamentally low-quality tips it's somewhere between redundant and a waste of resources. And those analysts are part of a law enforcement community that is rife with biases about crime and guns, which means most of the places where the system finds gunshots are where the biased people (who by default placed the detectors according to a bias) expect to hear gunshots.
      • BryantD 4y ago
        ShotSpotter’s results are iffy, which appears to be a combination of a) ShotSpotter employees overriding the AI and b) weaknesses in the tech. There’s also some potential for reinforcing bias if you only put the sensors in neighborhoods you’re already worried about. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28264686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28264686 has previous discussion on this from a number of viewpoints.
        • googlryas 4y ago
  • nucleogenesis 4y ago
    Yeah this isn’t surprising considering these are the people who think touching or breathing near fentanyl can kill you
  • feet 4y ago
    It doesn't help that law enforcement organizations seem to higher the dullest knives in the drawer, of course they can't tell bs from non-bs. Whatever confirms their biases gets green-lit
    • anigbrowl 4y ago
      The thing is that prosecutors and courts are supposedly harboring some of the sharpest knives in the drawer, yet they cheerfully accept and often pass on BS at face value when it's expedient to do so.
      • feet 4y ago
        Supposedly is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, considering the state of the system I have a hard time believing it
      • sobkas 4y ago
        > The thing is that prosecutors and courts are supposedly harboring some of the sharpest knives in the drawer, yet they cheerfully accept and often pass on BS at face value when it's expedient to do so. Court system have one basic goal, to be a test if accused party have enough money to spend on lawyers, experts and their expertise. Affluenza much?
  • schwartzworld 4y ago
    Citations Needed did an episode a few years back on how TV Copaganda represents forensics as a much more solid "science" than it actually is. https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-94-the-goofy-pseudoscience-copaganda-of-tv-forensics https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-94-the-goofy-pseu...
  • Waterluvian 4y ago
    I don’t think it’s that the market is full of garbage. There is a demand from law enforcement for the garbage. They want science tools to confirm their biases and broken practices.
    • 8note 4y ago
      Not really science tools. They want authoritative looking tools to confirm their biases and broken practices. A scientific tool could prove a different direction than what law enforcement wants it to say.
  • Spooky23 4y ago
    Agree. The problem imo is that cops have an insular culture and are trained to control situations. That control is often an Illusion. They are also often exempt from some of the procurement rules that apply to other government entities. So they tend to accept handshake claims from people identified as “good guys” through some connection or the salesman’s former on the job status. Another issue is that they don’t pay for or maintain technology in many cases, and the organizations tend to want to fund overtime, gas and bullets over all else. Police rely on grants to buy stuff with tight timelines. So there’s a tendency to blow the federal grant quickly on something cool that some “good guy” promises.
  • akudha 4y ago
    I am terrified of affecting someone's health, freedom or money (especially health and freedom) unknowingly, mistakenly etc. How do people who lie in court, use unproven tools etc to screw someone's entire life sleep at night? This is so far beyond my comprehension.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • 20after4 4y ago
      They convince themself that the person is really guilty (of something, maybe not even the thing they are accused of, just generally bad / evil / wrong color / wrong religion. really whatever it takes for them to believe someone deserves punishment) .... then the ends justify the means.
    • Bluestrike2 4y ago
      Well, for starters, they don't actually think their junk science is junk science. If you're confident that you were right all along, and you nailed the "bad guy," you're going to sleep just fine. All of these people believe they're helping further the cause of justice; very few go to work thinking "this is bullshit, I know it, and I don't care." Given their training and experience--even though it's experience in a field we later define as junk science--they become confident in their own work, and confirmation bias is omnipresent. Not just for individual cases, but for entire forensic fields and methods. It's not exactly the same, but there have been countless examples of prosecutors and police officers who, when faced with convictions overturned due to DNA evidence, continued to maintain that the person was nevertheless guilty despite that evidence. And if I'm being totally honest, I can't even imagine how tempting that fantasy would be. The alternative is acknowledging that you got it wrong and an innocent person paid an extraordinary price for your failure, losing years of their life behind bars. Worse yet, your failure allowed allowed the actual murderer/rapist/etc. to get off scot-free and potentially harm others. It's terrifying enough to imagine screwing up a single case. Now imagine screwing up hundreds or possibly thousands, after spending years using what you believed to be forensic science that turned out to be little more than bullshit. In that light, the temptation to search for alternative explanations, fight against information and evidence that contradicts your theory of the case, etc. has to be overwhelming. And while there are absolutely people in the justice system who don't succumb to that temptation, there are plenty who do.
  • partdavid 4y ago
    The list goes on: instant-drug tests used for traffic stops with undeclared and uninvestigated false positive rates, drug sniffing dogs (cf. https://reason.com/2021/05/13/the-police-dog-who-cried-drugs-at-every-traffic-stop/ https://reason.com/2021/05/13/the-police-dog-who-cried-drugs... for example), burn patterns in arson investigation, etc.
• ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  There should be some kind of penalty for people using methods that have zero evidence to back them up, or at least they should be forced to present accurate error predictions so that unproven techniques such as fingerprint analysis can be admitted, but with the likelihood of a match happening by chance.
  • msla 4y ago
    In theory, there are two penalties that already exist: The state not getting a conviction because the defense excludes the evidence based on the Daubert standard, or, if that craps out, the defense planting a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury by pointing out that the prosecution's case is built on nothing. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/daubert_standard https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/daubert_standard > Under the Daubert standard, the factors that may be considered in determining whether the methodology is valid are: (1) whether the theory or technique in question can be and has been tested; (2) whether it has been subjected to peer review and publication; (3) its known or potential error rate; (4)the existence and maintenance of standards controlling its operation; and (5) whether it has attracted widespread acceptance within a relevant scientific community.
    • tonmoy 4y ago
      That’s not a penalty though, if the case gets thrown out it’s just non-reward.
      • vorpalhex 4y ago
        If you spend several work weeks on a project and I take it out back and burn it down, we would all describe that as me doing harm to you.
        • mcbits 4y ago
          If you pay me to work on a project, you can burn it for all I care as long as the check clears.
• BryantD 4y ago
  This is absolutely wild. There’s a guy out there who’s been teaching these courses for over 10 years, telling police that if someone says “I don’t know” on a 911 call it’s a sign they might have committed the crime. It sounds like some judges throw this out of court, but people have been convicted based on this stuff. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23556915-911-cops-scale https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23556915-911-cops-sc...
  • BizarroLand 4y ago
    My takeaway is that if you are ever on trial for a crime you didn't commit, you need to make sure that your defense attorney knows about this junk science and has a good and usable plan to tear it to shreds, or the jury will listen to some random cop talk about the quaver of your voice and accept that hunch as all of the evidence needed to show that you're guilty.
    • boomboomsubban 4y ago
      And then you show up for your trial and they use some other junk science you've never heard of to show that you're guilty.
    • laserlight 4y ago
      “Look mam. I've been a police officer for thirty years. I've seen things that you can't imagine. I've seen serial killers, child rapists, and whatnot. I know a criminal when I look them in the eye. When I hear them talk, there's no doubt.” Investing in an acting coach to help you convince the jury that you are the victim might be a better strategy than teaching science to flat earther jurors.
      • PicassoCTs 4y ago
        Prisons filled with resting bitch faces and unlikeable, awkward people, the jury system does not produce better justice, just different injustices close aligned to the prejudices of the jurors. Still improvement over the deals.
      • 4y ago
• hodgesrm 4y ago
  This story is why everyone should have the right to proper legal representation regardless of ability to pay. Cases based on junk science should not have to be reversed on appeal. It would also help build precedent against such methods.
  • josephcsible 4y ago
    > everyone should have the right to proper legal representation regardless of ability to pay Isn't that already the case?
    • inetknght 4y ago
      > Isn't that already the case? In spirit, perhaps. In fact, no. If you opt for court-provided representation, your defense attorney will typically have less than an hour to prep for your case -- barely long enough to get "your side of the story" and certainly not long enough to discover nuances relevant to the law. And you might even still have to pay; in Texas, for example, you're not entitled to court-appointed representation if your income is above some unspecified amount.
    • partdavid 4y ago
      In the U.S.? In theory; but in practice, there are a lot of problems with the system. A couple of sources, pointing out the failings and holes: https://apnews.com/article/court-decisions-eric-holder-supreme-court-of-the-united-states-united-states-government-96e348cdc34b448e84d4ad346debd417 https://apnews.com/article/court-decisions-eric-holder-supre... highlights the fact that this right extends only to criminal matters, many if not most defendants don't actually receive proper representation, and are subject to political motivations. https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/national-survey-indigent-defense-systems-nsids-2013 https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/national-survey-indigent... highlights some numbers around things like most systems for indigent defense still requiring payment, like application fees or recoupment, and the lack of lawyers in public defenders offices. Remember also that this is only the system if the court decides you "can't pay" and that's not the same thing as "can't pay without selling your house" or "can't pay without cleaning out your $1000 savings account". Judges can decide that since you're living at home your parents can afford to sell their assets to finance your defense, etc. So it's quite porous and there are people who can't afford an effective defense as we would understand but don't meet a judge's interpretation of their state's standard for indigency.
• verisimi 4y ago
  How could junk science end up being implemented? Who oversees this stuff?
  • mjhay 4y ago
    No one, really, except for the judge (who has training in law, not science).
    • Scoundreller 4y ago
      We don’t have to appoint lawyers to the bench, but it’s a hard addiction to shake off. (I’d argue we shouldn’t, after all, anyone, including judges, can hire out for legal advice as required)
  • polygamous_bat 4y ago
    A big criticism that I have heard from "defund the police" folks is that a lot of police departments across the country have more money than sense and accountability. If you are inclined to believe this statement, it is inevitable that they are, in best case, swindled by hucksters selling snake oil, and in worst case, are dabbling in corruption to enrich themselves.
    • BizarroLand 4y ago
      If you have a big wallet and someone telling you that if you don't spend all of that money this paycheck you'll get less next paycheck, then you'll buy snake oil if you have to just to make sure next week you still get paid the same.
  • BryantD 4y ago
    NIST apparently does some work in the field, although they don’t have oversight authority. They recently discovered that bite mark analysis is worthless: https://www.nist.gov/spo/forensic-science-program/bitemark-analysis-nist-scientific-foundation-review https://www.nist.gov/spo/forensic-science-program/bitemark-a...
• mjhay 4y ago
  This and other forensic "science" doesn't need to be good science. That's literally not the purpose at all. The purpose is to convince a jury of the guilt of the defendant that the police and prosecution have already decided is guilty. That's where the incentives are, and that's what happens in practice (as is explicitly clear in this case). CSI probably didn't help matters here.
  • feet 4y ago
    That's only a sign that it needs to be changed, badly
  • rnd0 4y ago
    >CSI probably didn't help matters here. Indeed, it did not. It's so notorious it has it's own wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect
  • dinkumthinkum 4y ago
    This is very reductionist. You act as if these people just want to put any random person in prison. If this was true, unsolved murder rates would not be so high. It fails basic logic because from this premise, the police abs prosecutors are ready, willing, and able to prosecute and largely convict innocent people and it is in their benefit to have high clearances. What explains the disparity?
    • jki275 4y ago
      You should do some basic research on how many people are falsely convicted. It's a LOT, and that's even allowing for the fact that many of them you'll never know about because they don't have the money to appeal or ever have those false convictions overturned. No, police do not generally just go grab somebody and prosecute them. But they do regularly go and look for people who might be tangentially connected, determine they are guilty, and make up a case to prove them so. I've seen it happen personally, a good friend of mine spent time in prison for a crime someone else committed, I testified on their behalf at the trial to no avail. Police and prosecutors want to win. Police get promoted by "solving cases" which has no relation to whether or not the guilty person went to jail, only whether someone went to jail. Prosecutors make their political bones on the backs of people they put in prison -- again, whether they are guilty or innocent doesn't actually matter.
• bena 4y ago
  The field of law enforcement is rife with bad science and even misapplied science. Television does not help. Copaganda shows like Bones, NCIS, CSI, The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, and others give a very unrealistic portrayal of what technology and people are capable of. And it's become the standard that is expected. And gives the illusion that if there is a "process", it must be accurate. That if the answer is precise, it is accurate.
• triplesec 4y ago
  This famous edict: Don't Talk to Police, now seems to include calling 911. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
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  • shepherdjerred 4y ago
    I love this video. Watching should be mandatory for both high schoolers and jurors.
• polygamous_bat 4y ago
  A big criticism that I have heard from "defund the police" folks is that a lot of police departments across the country have more money than sense and accountability. If you are inclined to believe this statement, it is inevitable that they are, in best case, swindled by hucksters selling snake oil, and in worst case, are dabbling in corruption to enrich themselves. Stories like these only add more evidence to that claim.
  • loteck 4y ago
    Folks don't need to accept all the baggage that comes with the "defund" label. You can want rigorous oversight and oppose wasteful spending of public dollars by just being a normal person who always wants those things.
    • kenjackson 4y ago
      But against the police, once you ask for any oversight or accountability then you no longer back the blue and are the enemy.
    • bnralt 4y ago
      Indeed. Just like you can be against waste in public schools, but if you start marching around with signs that say "Defund Schools" you shouldn't be surprised if people take your sign at face value and don't want to associate with you.
    • kasey_junk 4y ago
      The “defund” label is perhaps the worst marketing of any social movement ever. Nearly everyone would agree with the main nominal ideas - more oversight, less violent responses, more accountability and moving resources away from militarized police and towards social work, specifically psychological interventions. It’s so bad the tinfoil hat me often thinks it’s an op by the military industrial complex to ensure one of their biggest cash cows never faces budget issues.
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• Zak 4y ago
  The judge being surprised the FBI conducted studies concluding the technique lacks merit after having published an article about the initial promising result is a problem. Preliminary results without independent verification are notoriously unreliable. Imagine an engineer designing something safety-critical based on a single scientific paper describing a result that hadn't been replicated elsewhere. Engineers usually don't do that, but if they do they face significant liability and risk losing their licenses.
• nootropicat 4y ago
  Humans didn't change at all since tests like cruentation were an accepted method. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruentation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruentation Fortunately it appears ai will soon enough act as a modern version of God's judgment, which while still not perfect, should be significantly better than some random cop's gut feeling.
  • Mechanical9 4y ago
    I may just be cynical, but I don't see any reason why AI judgement won't be the next cruentation. AI decisions are based purely on learned biases, which may be effectively equivalent to gut feelings. There will be many opportunities for AI-determined suspicions to be used as a determination of guilt in lieu of real evidence. "The AI finds it likely that you committed the murder." It doesn't have to be this way, but given the perpetual misunderstanding and misapplication of AI, I think it's likely to happen anyway.
    • BizarroLand 4y ago
      Before that happens, the whole world would need to be under continual observation. Then we would have to realize that it always takes more people to observe the people than there are people to observe, and turn the eternal watch over to AI. Then the AI wouldn't be saying, "I think it's likely you did this", it would be saying, "Here's the video of you doing this".
      • dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Before that happens, the whole world would need to be under continual observation. I don't see any reason that is a necessary precondition for an evolving reliance on AI judgement. Though obviously there are potential interactions between surveillance ubiquity and that. > Then the AI wouldn't be saying, "I think it's likely you did this", it would be saying, "Here's the video of you doing this". Crimes tend to have elements that cannot be shown on a video, but which might be deemed likely based on a video, like knowledge and intent. So, it will exactly be “I think oy is likely that you did this”.
• deleted 4y ago
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• anonymouse008 4y ago
  I just learned of new federal rules of procedure that made my stomach turn. > Like all evidence, the proponent must establish authenticity and admissibility. The issue of authenticity has been addressed in federal court with the addition of Fed. R. Evid. 902(13) and (14). Louisiana has not yet adopted similar amendments to the Louisiana Rules of Evidence. > This rule eliminates the necessity of a foundational witness at trial. The person who makes the certification must meet Rule 602 (personal knowledge) and Rule 702 (scientific or specialized knowledge) and Rule 901(b)(9) requiring explanation of how the process or system that generated the electronic record produces reliable and accurate results. > With a human expert, if you want to challenge the opinion, you file a motion in limine which allows you to put on evidence prior to trial to contest the expert's qualifications to give the opinion or the expert's methodology. > The proponent of the AI opinion will have to establish that the Al algorithm produces accurate results. If the proponent cannot do that, then the evidence is unreliable. Unreliable evidence is not relevant. [...] > At the end of the day, if the court finds the Al opinion authentic, then it will be admitted in evidence and the opponent will not be able to cross examine the opinion at trial. Gosh, the only thing I can think of that might save us is challenging the features that become inputs into the models - however, with GPT-4's example, as those increase to inhumane sizes, I wonder if even that will remain an effective strategy. Source: Louisiana Bar Association Journal
  • deleted 4y ago
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• pnw 4y ago
  This reminds me of a friend who stated that when you call 911, you should ask for police/fire/ambulance, give your name and address and then put the phone down. I thought he was overly paranoid but I guess not.
• oftenwrong 4y ago
  I recall reading similarly-alarming articles about other police junk science in the US. For example, Shot Spotter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31958201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31958201 I believe I have read similar about drug sniffing dogs and certain forms of field drug testing. There appears to be no sufficient mechanism for preventing junk science from tainting the process of justice.
• throwthere 4y ago
  Note the ties to Cincinnati, where in 2018 a young boy called 911 multiple times when he was trapped in a minivan seat that folded in a way he ceased trapped. The operator didn’t believe him, a cop did a cursory search after two calls even though the make and model of the van were given. The boy slowly suffocated to death. His last words were telling the operator to tell his mom he loved her. Makes you wonder if their system flagged his call and it wasn’t entirely the result of a completely incompetent 911 operator and cop.
• PicassoCTs 4y ago
  Verdicts should have references to evidence classes that are based on a scientific method. If that evidence class is revealed to be junk science, all cases with that class, should be automatically repopened.
• TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  There's a lot of awful stuff in here, but as a non American, this really blows my mind: > Prosecutors charged the mother with second-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. She took a plea deal — without admitting guilt — that resulted in a manslaughter conviction and she served about two years. “We would never have known the truth,” Garland wrote to Harpster, “if it hadn’t been for your book and your excellent training.” The possibilities here are: 1. This women was innocent, her child died, and she spent 2 years in prison, or 2. This woman was guilty of murder and only spent 2 years in prison. Either way, surely this concept of a "plea deal" is a broken one that doesn't lead in any way to justice?